As The Dust Settles
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: A Spock/Chapel oneshot I wrote last night for a dear friend who wanted sex and explosions. Trapped in a room in a war zone, expecting to die, Spock and Christine throw caution to the wind. Rated 18 (NC-17 for you Americans ;-))


She couldn't believe that it was happening here. Not here. Outside the sound of explosions still rocked the plaza. A building on the other side of the wide space had been smashed into no more than rubble. Gunshots and screaming filled the air. But here inside this five storey, concrete-built block, there was a heat of a very different nature.

They had been trapped in this room for the past four hours with no food and very little water. There was nothing barring them in, no rubble falls outside the door, but Spock forbade her to leave. The situation outside was simply too dangerous. Each time she heard a new blast or sounds of fear and agony from living beings every fibre of her body made her want to rush out and help. She was a nurse, a medical professional. But the first time Spock had grasped her by the wrist so firmly that she could not move her arm at all.

'You will not go out there,' he said in a low voice.

'There are people dying out there,' she replied in a hiss that would have been a scream if she had been brave enough to raise her voice.

'There is no sense in adding yourself to that number,' Spock said.

There was another reverberating bang outside and Spock pushed her to the floor just as a wave of searing heat pressed through the shattered window and into the room. Artfully, he had pushed her onto a dust covered mattress that lay near the wall, and she was relieved, because the force with which he had knocked her down could have meant concussion or broken bones otherwise. There was a crackle in the air and the heat seemed to billow around her. Outside there must be a fireball of staggering magnitude.

'Spock, what if the captain – ' she began.

'Even if the captain is out there, you cannot go out,' Spock said steadily.

They were both lying on the mattress now, his body partially over hers as if to protect her from the heat or the debris. If the intent was to protect from the heat it was misplaced, because his body was hot in its own right. The air that she breathed was hot, the walls were hot, the floor was hot. She was hot and he was hotter on top of her. Sweat sheened her chest where the neck of her uniform scooped down. It prickled beneath her breasts and at the back of her neck. She knew she must be filthy, smeared with dust from rubble that had turned into streaks on her damp skin. She was glad, for once, that her uniform was so scanty.

Spock, covered in fabric from neck to ankle, showed no signs of being troubled by the heat. He too was dirty. There was a streak of dark soot on his cheek and some on his ear. She longed to lift her hand and rub the smut off that tapering tip, but she did not. Instead she acquiesced to his determination to protect her, and relaxed onto the mattress. It was safer down here, below the level of the windowsill. If necessary, if this building was struck, they could go underneath the mattress and it might provide some protection from falling concrete. She had no idea what this place had been – perhaps some kind of squat, by the look of it – but so far the room had saved their lives.

'What if the captain is out there in that?' she repeated more softly.

Spock relaxed too, slipping his body off hers and lying beside her with an attitude that spoke of quiet defeat.

'If he is out there, he will have to take his own chances,' Spock said. 'The hope is that he and the other members of the team have managed to beam up.'

The hope, Christine noticed he had said. Spock had carefully divorced the concept of hope from his own expectations. Vulcans, she was sure, did not hope. Hope would be considered illogical.

'Are we going to die here?' she asked quietly.

'It is quite possible,' Spock replied.

He rested his head back and gazed up at the ceiling. There was the remains of a light up there, just a naked severed cord hanging from a damaged rose that was no longer properly attached. The walls of the room were splashed with graffiti. In one corner was a pile of rubbish that Christine did not care to inspect. It could have been clothes and newspapers and other such formless things, but they had been there for long enough that they had started to sink into a homogeneous brown lump. It looked like an abandoned drug den. What a place to die.

'Our communicators can no longer receive a signal,' Spock said, still looking at the ceiling so intently that she was not sure if he was speaking to her or himself. 'However, it is quite possible that the other members of the party managed to beam up before conditions worsened. If the ship's sensors or transporters were working correctly we would almost certainly have been beamed up by now. The level of warfare outside is – quite extreme.'

'Quite,' she echoed quietly.

She turned over onto her side, wondering for a moment at the circumstance that had left her lying on a bed with Spock. How she had dreamed of finding herself in such a position with him, but she had never expected to be here in this situation, with unbridled explosions and gunfire crackling outside.

'Mr Spock – ' she began, but at the same moment Spock spoke.

'You look hot,' he said, and she laughed abruptly.

'Mr Spock, you are very perceptive,' she said dryly.

He lifted an eyebrow, and her heart jerked. He was very close beside her. She could see into the depths of his dark eyes, see the individual eyelashes, the pores of his skin.

'I suggest removing those pantyhose,' he said.

Why was it so ridiculously thrilling to hear Spock say the word pantyhose? But it was. She continued to gaze at him, unable to respond. Finally she came back to herself and said, 'Yes. Yes, I suppose that's a good idea.'

Spock was suggesting it from the most logical of motives, of course. The clinging pantyhose provided no protection. They just increased her warmth. She sat up on the bed and slipped off her boots. Then she put her hands to her hips. Spock regarded her for a moment, and then closed his eyes. Quickly she slipped the pantyhose down and pushed them off. The relief from the heat was immediate.

'There, done,' she said, smiling.

Spock opened his eyes, then pulled her back to the mattress as another explosion rocked the building.

'Oh,' she said breathlessly. He had pulled her close against himself, his arm over her body as if a few inches of Vulcan flesh could save her from harm.

'It's all right,' Spock said as the dust settled.

Christine blew upwards out of her mouth, trying to blow away a strand of hair that had fallen over her face. Spock reached up and brushed it away delicately, with long fingers. His hands were dirty but his fingernails were immaculately clean.

'Thank you,' she said.

His fingers stayed there at the side of her face, touching her lightly. He stroked a little further, passing his fingertips over her ear as if he were as fascinated by her rounded ear as she was by his pointed one.

'Spock, are we going to die here?' she asked him again.

He silenced her by moving his face forward and touching his lips softly to hers. Electrified, for a moment she did not know how to respond, but then suddenly she could respond and was responding, kissing him hungrily, reaching up to find the alien contours of his ear, running her fingertips over his glossy black hair, wanting to be closer to him, closer and closer until she was inside him or he was inside her and they were enveloped in one another. His tongue was seeking into her mouth and she was startled at the alien tang of his saliva. It reminded her of passion fruit. Perhaps he thought the same of hers.

His hands were moving over her body. He seemed to have lost himself, lost every Vulcan restraint, as if her words about dying had told him to throw caution to the wind, to take everything that he could in these last moments, because they could never be repeated. She had no thought of decorum, no thought of resisting. Outside the war was still raging but her awareness seemed to have narrowed down to this room, this mattress, to the heat enclosing both of them but reaching no further. If they were to have no tomorrow then this was the best way that today could end, in a blaze that encompassed them both.

His hands seemed to be everywhere, but then hers were too, feeling up under the thin layers of his shirt and undershirt, catching the beating of his heart against the side of his ribs, the fine fur of hairs on his chest, the buds of his nipples which were standing proud. He made a noise something like a growl and pulled those tops off, flinging them aside so that he lay there just in his dark trousers and boots. His skin was flushed lightly green and his eyes seemed to be alight with desire. She could hardly bear to look at him. His hand was on her shoulder, his finger beneath the edge of her dress's neckline, but she knew that he would not just rip away her clothing. Even in this state, he had control. She pulled down the zip and shrugged the dress off, throwing it to land beside his discarded tunic. His hands slipped around her back and fumbled with the clasp of her bra. She expected his attempt to fail, but it did not, and he released her breasts, staring at them for a moment before touching them with his hands, and then sinking his mouth over one. The sound he made was almost a moan. She was gasping, electrified with desire, her back arching as his tongue worked around the stiff nipple and his mouth sucked.

'Oh, god,' she murmured.

'There is no god,' Spock said, his fingers at the waist of her panties, drawing them down.

'Oh, there is,' she countered. She had no thought of resisting, but lay back as he peeled away that last small barrier and began to explore into her valleys with his fingers, finding the centre of her and pulsing until she gasped.

'Oh, please, please,' she said in a moan, her head arched back, eyes half closed.

His hand froze, and she felt his doubt, felt it, as if she had suddenly been given a window into his mind.

'Please, I need you,' she said, clarifying, terrified that he would come back to his senses and stop.

Another explosion screamed through the air and for a moment her ears rang, but she did not let it stop anything. The blast of heat was a welcome caress. She put her hand on Spock's chest to push him down onto the mattress, found the zipper of his trousers, and slid it down. She was getting ahead of herself though. She steadied herself, turned herself to his boots, worked them and his socks off until his feet were bare. Oh, those feet. She had seen them on occasion when Spock had been in sickbay. She had always loved his hands and feet. He was always clean, like a cat, but now he was dusty and filthy, there was dust in his hair, dust streaked over his chest and face, dirt on his feet that must have worked down inside his socks. She ignored it all and drew down trousers and underpants together, revealing the fullness of him. He lay there naked from top to toe. She had seen it all before in sickbay, but not like this. He was flushed with desire. He was already a little erect. She touched her hand to the dark, heavy penis, felt the heat of it, worked her hand up and down it and saw it jerk stiffer, saw the abstracted, lip-parted expression of pleasure on his face. She had never seen such naked emotion on his face. She wanted to sink her mouth over that dark rod, to consume him entirely. Oh, how much she wanted that. She could not stop herself. She bent and captured the length between her teeth, causing him to jerk and cry out briefly. She wondered distantly if Vulcans saw any logic in oral sex. But damn it, sex wasn't about logic, it was about pleasure. She plunged her mouth over him, touching her hand to the cool, crinkled sac beneath, feeling the soft testes inside, slipping her fingers down to the perineum and massaging him there until he groaned aloud.

Finally she relented, relaxing her hand, letting go, slipping her mouth from him. He growled, capturing her wrists, turning her over bodily so she lay on her back on the mattress and he was over her, hot and ready and propelled with an animal lust that she had never imagined could live in him. He parted her legs with his knee, lowered himself down, and fitted his stiff shaft into the warmth of her body. She cried out aloud, speaking the name of god, Jesus, Spock himself, but her low cries were lost behind the crackle of gunfire from outside. He withdrew and then plunged harder, harder again, his mouth on her breasts again, one hand caressing her body, the other supporting his weight. Again and again he withdrew and then came to meet her again, and each time she whimpered with the parting and gasped at the rejoining. The world outside dwindled smaller and smaller. All that existed was his body, the feeling of him inside her, his hands on her skin, his mouth on her skin, the sound of him like an animal in heat as he satiated his need. His dark eyes met her blue ones and she seemed to fall deeper and deeper into him. She was a part of him. His hand was on her face now, his fingertips lightly touching her temple, cheek, forehead. It was dizzying, uncontrollable. She could feel what he felt, feel his building orgasm, feel the depth of his desire. It was too much to take, it was like containing a galaxy inside her. She wanted to scream with the pure pleasure of it, and she knew that she could scream because there was no one to hear.

This time the explosion was inside the room, inside their minds, inside Spock's body and coming into hers as he climaxed and a moment later her own orgasm joined his. He was lying against her, his body heavy on her, sweat slick between them, their panting breaths coming together, their fingers entwined.

'Oh god,' she murmured. 'Oh god...'

'Perhaps you are right,' Spock said, his mouth so close to her ear that she could feel his words as well as hear them.

Christine felt as if she had brought the entire star spangled galaxy into her body, as if the explosions outside had been billowing out inside her mind. It was almost too much to bear. This bliss, this sheer bliss, could not be borne, surely? It could never be repeated.

They lay there for a long time, flesh to flesh, heartbeat to heartbeat. And then Spock said, 'It is getting dark, and cold.'

She had not noticed the cold, but now she shivered. She was no longer damp with sweat but quite dry, warm beneath Spock's body but chilled elsewhere. Spock rolled away from her and she almost sobbed. She did not want him to ever move away. But he stood up and she watched him in the dusk light, the lines of his body lit up spasmodically by flashes of orange and white from outside. He was so beautiful, it was like watching a cat move across the room. The light shone on his hip, buttock, on the line of his leg as he bent to retrieve their clothes.

'Dress,' he said simply, beginning to don his own clothes. She wanted to beg him not to, for he was so beautiful, but she stayed quiet and just revelled in watching him slip his clothes over that perfect form. Everything had to come to an end.

He stopped before he put his tops back on and said to her again, 'Christine, you must dress.'

She gazed at him. It was either a fire or the setting sun that was making his chest hair look burnished in the light. The angles of his face were perfect. His hair was mussed but it was already falling back into place as it always seemed to do. He shook out his undershirt and she almost moaned at the thought of him hiding that chest and those slim arms. But he was right. The temperature was dropping and she needed to dress. She found her underwear and put it on, then slipped her dress back on, not bothering with the pantyhose. They were too entangled to work out in the swiftly falling dark.

Spock came back to the mattress and sat down, leaning against the wall.

'It is somewhat quieter outside, don't you think?' he asked.

She turned herself so that she was sitting beside him, leaning her back on the cool wall as he was, resting her head on the warmth of his shoulder.

'It is quieter,' she said. 'Much.'

There was another flash and a split second later the noise of a bomb, but it was somewhat further away. The slight difference in time between light and noise proved the distance.

'Perhaps we won't die after all,' she said.

Spock touched his fingers to the side of her face, stroking away her tousled hair with great gentleness. He said nothing, but there was something of reassurance in his touch, something that said even if we are not sent into oblivion by an explosion, even if we get back to the ship, we have still shared this, and we will share it again.

As his lips touched her hair something inside her quavered. As the feeling built she recognised the warm hum of the transporter capturing their bodies and taking them away from all of this, from the little squalid room and the shattered window and the graffitied walls, from the bare mattress on the floor and the ear splitting explosions, and from the place where she felt that together they had been reborn.


End file.
